Google Apologizes for Sicko Blog Post

On Friday, Google employee Lauren Turner created a post on the official Google blog which criticized Michael Moore's new film "Sicko."

The post caused so much outrage that Turner has since posted another note which apologizes for her controversial suggestions.

In the original post, Turner not only panned the movie but also offered health care advertisers a way to fight back by placing Google ads so that when a user searches for Sicko, their health care ad pops up.

"We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network," she said. "Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company's assets while helping users find the information they seek." (Source blogspot.com)

It's certainly not surprising that the post caused such outrage. As such, it's also not a shock that Turner's next move was to post an apology. On Sunday, Turner posted a note stating, "some readers thought the opinion I expressed about the movie Sicko was actually Google's opinion. It's easy to understand why it might have seemed that way, because after all, this is a corporate blog. So that was my mistake -- I understand why it caused some confusion." (Source: blogspot.com)

Turner then went on to explain that her original post was only meant to demonstrate that Google advertisements can be an avenue for "handling challenges."

But the apology is not sufficient in many people's eyes. After all, the original post highlighted a serious issue facing Google; the post demonstrates Google's ability to use blogging to communicate with the general public for varying, and sometimes unorthodox, issues. (Source: forbes.com)

The good news, however, is clear from the criticism that the blog post received: people are not going to be spoon-fed their opinions.